New this month, an Ultimate guide to Thoth

gregory

I've met Fiebig's Ultimate RWS.

I really don't want his ultimate guide to anything else thank you.

And
Writing in a convenient format designed for simple reference...
doesn't sound much like the Thoth I know (a bit ) and love.
 

Nemia

Some time ago, I went on an undignified rant against a certain kind of tarot books by German writers. Burger/Fiebig are exactly the kind of writers I was thinking about. The authors are publishing one tarot book after the other. I only looked at them in shops, never bought one. I found them vague and insipid. Something like Gerd Ziegler with sugar and served on a doily.

You see? There I go again. I MUST NOT think about certain German tarot authors. I must breathe.... relax.. think of pink unicorn babies and rainbows... yessss.....

ETA: I didn't see this specific book yet, only their older books. They may have improved.
 

MaeWasteland

I don't know much about the Thoth, but it seems like the sort of system where, if you're planning to write a guide to it, especially an "ultimate" guide to it, you should be a "specialist", so to speak, either very focused on the Thoth, or more generally on Crowley and Thelema/ceremonial magic(k). It's a very intensive area, and not something you can just dabble in (as an author - not going to comment on using the deck, I'd like a copy at some point and am unlikely to manage any really serious study of it...) That the same author has apparently penned an "ultimate" guide to the RWS does not fill me with hope that he'll do the Thoth justice!

Also, " with this incredibly detailed and illustrated guide", "Writing in a convenient format designed for simple reference" - which is it??

Oh my - just searched the Amazon preview (which typically scans the entire text, even sections not available for previewing) for "Crowley", "Thelema" and a couple of other keywords (including Hebrew which, ISTR the Hebrew lettering/gematria is meant to be quite an important part of the deck/system, no?), absolutely 0 results. http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ultimate-Guide-Thoth-Tarot/dp/0738743364 (Hmm, to be fair, I get 0 results for "thoth", too - maybe the search is just broken on this book, but certainly the available-for-preview text doesn't seem to make any reference to Crowley etc, it all seems deeply generic, just referring to/reproducing the images on the Thoth deck (I presume) rather than an RWS or TdM type deck.)

The "10 most important symbols" on each card section seems potentially useful, though - not sure how accurate it is, but it seems to go into quite a bit of detail (this is relating to X classical god, that's a bible reference, those are traditionally associated with Y, etc). On the other hand, all 10 are on one page, so there's no room to go into, say, *why* a crab and a crescent moon means either stubbornness or "clarity of feelings and needs", or how you'd know which is relevant in a given reading. I suppose the book might be handy as a "quick reference" once you've read some rather more in-depth material on the deck?
 

AJ

you would get zero results because the ink is barely dry, it only came out this month.

It isn't very upright and compassionate of me, but when I see a Hay House or Llewellyn imprint on a book I'm immediately skeptical, as most of their authors and artists are churners.

We all have to make a living, but I'm careful whose career I am supporting

That said, both companies are to be commended for supporting the type of books I might read.
I'd far rather read something professionally published, for the simple reason of their editors. The self-published books I've read have been a real mess and I'm careful to chose what I'm ordering as I don't want any more of them
 

gregory

Actually Barbara Moore publishes with Llewellyn, and so does Mary Greer.

Now, Hay House - yes absolutely !
 

MaeWasteland

you would get zero results because the ink is barely dry, it only came out this month.

It isn't very upright and compassionate of me, but when I see a Hay House or Llewellyn imprint on a book I'm immediately skeptical, as most of their authors and artists are churners.

We all have to make a living, but I'm careful whose career I am supporting

That said, both companies are to be commended for supporting the type of books I might read.
I'd far rather read something professionally published, for the simple reason of their editors. The self-published books I've read have been a real mess and I'm careful to chose what I'm ordering as I don't want any more of them

AFAIK Amazon book previews should be fully searchable (as in, when you're 'looking inside' the book and type a word into the search bar on the left) more or less immediately, but I'm guessing as it's new nobody's yet noticed that it's not working, probably the text wasn't scanned or formatted quite right, or something along those lines.

I know what you mean about Llewellyn, though I do have a vague sense of nostalgia as some of theirs were kinda My First Witchy Books, but yeah, I always do a little sad noise when I'm looking at an interesting sounding book and notice it's one of theirs - I've got one or two of their more recent ones which are in some way worthwhile (if you take them as 'this is an interesting read about how one person sees stuff' rather than, say, a well-researched, fact-based book about the topic, of course), but mostly, yeah, I'm not keen. I do like the design of their witches' calendar though (I think it's them, sort of pseudo-woodcut style, but brightly coloured?)
 

AJ

I'm not dissing the whole companies Gregory, I just tread carefully when shopping :)
 

avalonian

The table of contents refers to Pentacles, not Disks. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.